FreeSWITCH module in OpenSim

It seems that Linden Labs has finally changed their code and removed the hardcoded vivox.com references in 1.22; this has opened a lot of possibilities for making voice chat work, which previously required the – still valid – voipforvw project’s SLVoice replacement. There is of course nothing wrong with voipforvw except that it’s a monster that prefers to live under a rock and by its nature does not lend itself easily to compiling; as other internal targets were more important, and the replacement SLVoice was working (and working well, actually) with the Asterisk setup, unfortunately I had pretty much no time to get that project into shape.

To my great relief, Rob Smart from IBM has finally stepped up the game and provided a solution for FreeSWITCH, that works without this SLVoice replacement (I want to note though, that it is only working with the unmodified SLVoice.exe because of the changes in the viewer, and in all likeliness, the Asterisk solution would work just as well). I’ve been eyeing FreeSWITCH for quite a while and just when I finally have some spare time to play around with it, this new module comes out: and it’s really awesome! First of all, it works without jumping through ztdummy/dahdi hoops and mysql realtime configurations, or heaven forbid, RFC4028s.

Setup is very straightforward, and it works even on Windows. To set it up, you will need three components:

First, OpenSim itself. Because the new FreeSWITCH module is experimental, it is only found in trunk, and as usual, please note, that trunk is unstable it might have serious bugs, it can corrupt your data, or eat your children, especially if you do the unthinkable and try to install it in a production environment, which you should never do. Ever! No exceptions. If you are brave enough, you can proceed very carefully and try out the trunk.

Next, obviously, you will need FreeSWITCH. I tried the Windows binary snapshot from here: that works well. For the configuration instructions take a look at the OpenSim wiki page. Linux installation instructions are also included there.

Finally, SecondLife viewer. Only versions later than 1.22 are supported, so be sure to grab a newer version from Linden Labs.

After setting up FreeSWITCH and OpenSim, connecting to the grid and enabling voice chat, one surprising thing will happen by default: that is, nothing. Conference chat won’t work with the default estate settings, because the parcel voice is disabled. In the video, I’m setting “Use a private spatial channel”, but “Use the estate spatial channel” should work as well. Enable voice, and it will work now. After this, conference and private chat features will work. On my setup, I found that private chat is quite clear and easy to understand, but the spatial conferences are way too low quality, but that is probably a configuration issue on my environment.